Encouragement

I was having a pretty down day today. We had our annual crop walk today and I couldn't go because my hips and back were hurting really bad. I really enjoyed doing it last year, so I was kind of down. On top of that, I was really moody and blah today. So, I dropped everyone off at the church for it and then went to get something to eat. I wasn't feeling the greatest and was kind of picking at my food when a lady walked up to me and asked if I was ok. I told her that I was pregnant and just not feeling that well. She asked how far along I was and I told her almost five months. Then she put her hand on my shoulder and said, "well, this too shall pass. You know...the feeling pregnant part of pregnancy." I don't think that she knew how much that meant to me, but I almost couldn't keep from crying in the restaurant before I left. It was the encouragement that I needed at the moment. I instantly felt God's love. It is awesome that something as insignificant as a down day is important enough for Him to send me a message about. The saying "this too shall pass" actually comes from folk lore. There are several versions. I'll put one of them here so you can read it.

An eastern monarch who drew his sages together one day in his kingdom and all of his soothsayers and the wise men of the kingdom were drawn together, and he said, "You know, men, I would like you to summarize for me the wisdom of the world. I'd like you to bring it to me; I'd like you to work on it, and I'd like you to collect the wisdom of the world. I want to see it; I want to read it." And they worked for many months, and they brought back to him several volumes of what they called the Wisdom of the World, the pithy sayings of the world.

And they said, "This is it; this is the wisdom of the world."

And he looked at it, and he said, "You know, that is really good. Thank you. It's wonderful," he said, "but it's too much." He says, "Can you reduce this, like a fine French sauce. Can you reduce it to maybe a single volume."

And so they went back, and they worked, and they worked, and they worked for several months, and they brought back a single volume of the best of the wisdom of the world. And they said, "This is it."

And he took the book, and he held it gingerly in his hands, and he thumbed through it, and he read it for a little while, and after a couple of weeks he brought his wise men back together, and he said, "You know," he says, "this is really good. But what I really would like for you to do is to reduce the wisdom of the world to a sentence. Can you put it in a sentence?"

And they said, "We don't know. We don't know if we can do this."

And so finally after many more months of work, all the sages came back to him, and they had come to a unanimous conclusion that the wisdom of the world could be put into a four-word sentence. They told the king that this sentence expresses much. It is chastening in the hour of pride and consoling in the depths of afflictions. And I've reflected on this sentence this week. The sentence of their wisdom was: "This too shall pass."

Here is another version if you are interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass

I Corinthians 10:12 - "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."